Getting More Like My Daddy Than Me

A few years ago, an experience awakened me to the fact I was no longer living in that black hole of time between leaving adolescence and not yet having enough life experience to be considered and adult.

One day my oldest son, who was a teen at the time, was listening to his favorite radio station. After hearing a few minutes of his so-called music, I blurted out something I had sworn that my kids would never hear me say: "You call that music?!

I couldn't believe my own ears. Surely that wasn't my voice saying the same words I heard my parents say to me some 20-odd years ago.

I turned around, hoping to find my father standing behind me. People say that he and I sound alike; perhaps he had popped in unannounced, and it was he who I heard give that un-cool critique of my boy's musical taste. No such luck. I was the guilty party, all right.

I quickly ran to the nearest mirror. What I saw confirmed my fears that I was indeed an adult: gray hair; a slightly lined face; a soft, somewhat pudgy stomach; and my hips had rolls on them that would make the folks at Wonder Bread jealous. Yes, all of the classic signs that I was an adult were present.

No way could this be happening to me, I thought. I always lived by the words of that song in Peter Pan, "I don't want to grow up." But here I was, staring adulthood right in the face. Yes, I had become an adult and there was nothing I could do about it.

Questions began exploding in my mind concerning how to handle this discovery. Should I change most of my wardrobe to polyester? Should I insist on bifocals from my optometrist? Should I stop exceeding the speed limit and start driving more slowly than most people run?

Perhaps I should begin taking those vitamins made just for adults and commence adding more fiber to my diet. I even considered going to the supermarket to size up adult diapers, but hey, I still had control of my bodily functions. Why push it?

Finally it dawned on me: Adulthood and growing old are not always synonymous. Adulthood means taking responsibility for the things that are yours, such as dependents, citizenship, debts, mistakes, and rearing your children to be good, upstanding people. Being an adult means acting maturely even when those around you are not. By these standards, some people reach adulthood in their teenage years, while others reach it later in life. Still, many never do become adults.

With this new outlook on adulthood, I began feeling a little better about the whole thing. Then, looking back at the mirror, I was reminded of what the passage of time was doing to a body of which I was once proud. Let me tell you, a whole new awakening occurred. But that's another story for another time.